Elite: Dangerous.
'Witchspace Tales'
It was your average day for your average "CMDR" in the Eravate system. A simple trader he was, who hated getting into fights and being interdicted by pirates, as any sane trader would. He wasn't one of those 'bounty hunters' who loved getting into scraps for no good reason, or a mercenary. Not at all. He liked it being nice, safe, and boring. As any sane trader would.
Eravate was an agricultural system, all of its planets and stations being used for farming and other such things, selling its food to any nearby systems that simply couldn't grow enough themselves to feed their massive factories, entertainment complexes, or what-have-you. As any sane trader would, this Commander helped moving things where they needed to go, even if he was just another cog in the machine. All he consistently had to his name was a simple 'Type-6' class vessel, a hauling design made by Zorgon Peterson, some interstellar ship-building firm that specialized in that sort of thing.
He was at Russel's Ring, one of Eravate's several star ports. A massive Orbis class station, and he was here for his most lucrative trading run yet: Buying and selling tea in bulk. There was another system nearby, an industrial system that ravenously consumed Tea. He was making a decent amount of credits each time. It was a bit slow, but it was safe though, which was the best thing about it in his mind. As any sane trader would think.
He decided to take a break for a bit though, to just take a gander through the stations' residential and commercial areas. He came across a bar that seemed nice enough, and sat himself down to have a few drinks, admiring the size of stations these days and how quickly he rose through the ranks. He asked for a surprise as a drink, and he got some ale or stout he didn't recognize at first, and the writing was so weird to him he couldn't understand it, but it was strong, which was always good. He felt unease as someone sat across from him, a younger pilot who looked buzzed and scared. That was never a good combination.
It seemed they were the only pilots there, and after a bit (and confirming that this other one wouldn't do anything aggressive), they decided to talk about pilot things. The younger one took the wheel almost immediately, wanting someone who might actually understand his plight. He tensed up a bit before speaking, obviously still scarred from whatever happened to him.
"Thanks for hearing me out, m-man... I just need to let this off my c-chest. Well... I'm a Viper pilot, and I do some light merc and escort work. I don't really like doing that sorta thing but... y'know. I just do what gives me the biggest paycheck. I need to pay the bills just like anybody else. The other day, I was jumping out of Kremainn to follow and guard a type-seven trader, he was transporting computers or something, at least, that's what he told me.""When I followed his jump signature, everything went as normal for the first few minutes. My Friendship-... Sorry, in joke... with one of my buddies out there. A-anyway... my Frame-Shift Drive charged up, did some calcs, then went to supercruise, then to hyperspace, and all was fine at first, a bit behind the mark, but whatever. Not unexpected.. or anything.""This doesn't sound so strange at all so far.", the middle-aged CMDR remarked
"Just your average hyperspace jump. Did you suffer an FSD failure on the way?""God, I hope so..., A shiver, then a continuation.
"After the first few minutes, things started happening. It was all standard for a bit, I was seeing nebula... stars... little particles sometimes... but then stuff just, didn't really start appearing anymore. There weren't any micrometeorites, and stars didn't blink into view afterwards. And.. y'know how sometimes you can sort of.. hear stuff in the audio systems... in hyperspace?"A few moments of somewhat deep contemplation occurred for the Senior of the two, but he soon replied.
"Well... sometimes. Yes. Aside from the hyper-radio static. ...Well, what do you hear then?". A quick glance to the sides, and then an answer came out of the spooked pilot.
"I... hear whispers sometimes. Cries for help... 'Mommy'... voices telling me to go away. Not all the time... but it happens. "That's all probably pareidolia. Sure.. your radio'll pick up Hyper Radio messages it shouldn't, but it's not gonna do that. Not intentionally.", the graying Senior gave a pat of reassurance while ordering another pair of drinks,
"Go on."The ginger-haired rookie sighed then continued.
"Well... all that was silent. I didn't hear anything. I didn't even hear the... 'usual' hyperspace stuff like whooshes or ... whatever.", he slammed down a good portion of his next shot before going on.
"That's when I saw something out there, that wasn't supposed to be. It sorta looked like a ship in super-cruise, but really far away, and... bigger? Like... a Sidewinder's signature in super-cruise is tiny, a 'Conda or something is pretty big. This didn't shoot them out of the water or anything, but it was large. I never saw a Feddie's or an Empire battleship, but I guess it was just about as big, from what I heard. It couldn'tve been one of those, though. It was too surreal."An interesting look came from the older of the two, an intrigued one.
"Hey, another round.". The Rookie continued his confession.
"So I started looking at it.. and for some reason, my sensors started acting up. Well.. more so then usual in hyperspace.". Hyperspace travel was a good thing, as any sane trader would say, but it had its issues. Hyperspace was its own surreal little world... a ship going there, to come out somewhere else, basically went 'nowhere' first. It was something only a scientist or mathematician could understand, but a ships' sensors gave a good idea; when in Hyperspace, they told you, for example, that you were pointing...
Everywhere.
And Nowhere. Your total speed was 0,
and several billion times the speed of light. You were everywere and nowhere all at once, pointing at everything and nothing at the same time. It was strange, to say the least; your eyes and senses were telling you the logical thing; you were moving to the next star, just really really fast. The discrepancy was surreal for the first few jumps for anyone, for obvious reasons. Everybody says officially that hyperspace is totally explained on all levels, but something was amiss.
It still worked though, so 'Who cares?' was what any sane trader would think. The benefits were too grand too care. Things happened occasionally, though. Ships never arriving. Things being seen... And in centuries old records, the strange creatures known as 'Thargoids'... But those were old spacers' superstitions. Nothing anyone would have to worry about now.
'Maybe for that guy.', the Trader thought to himself before allowing the rookie to continue on.
"They seemed to stutter a bit, and it... well, it had two blips on it. You aren't supposed to see anything on the map during a hyperspace jump, right? So... I flicked through the targets, and.. my comp had no idea what to identify the two by. The blip that was closer at around... fifteen hundred light seconds I think? Really far, but 'close', and the computer was switching its identity from a Farragut, to an Interdictor, to an Anaconda, and just random strings of letters." "That other thing was just barely in sensor range at about seven thousand light seconds out, and this thing is gonna haunt me forever.""... It's burned into my retinas ... whenever I close my eyes, I can see it. It was so ... magnificent? Awe inspiring? It wasn't built by human hands, It just couldn'tve been. It was too.. perfect? It looked like if a circular nebula was solid, maybe two hundred or so kilometers across. It was as black as space, blotting out the very few stars I had left with me. It just switched them off as far as I could tell.""That's about when I noticed it was coming for me. It closed distance, really damn fast. I could see it moving, it turned from barely perceptible at that distance, to like... It got nearly as close as that other thing, about two-kay light seconds. It was keeping up with me, in... in hyperspace! They were trailing me! I could see its surface; the thing was smooth. Disgustingly so, it wasn't imperfect at all. It didn't have a single blemish or error, and.. it was reflective?""It kept on getting closer, and closer, and closer... It went slower as it did, but it was gaining on me! I tried to bash all of my controls to get away from it, but I couldn't do anything! My FSD didn't want to respond! I even got messages sent my way; a dozen or so of just massive walls of random text, error messages from the ship! I... I could hear things start to scream from the Hyper-Radio, like a chorus of people gurgling at me...""It went to rendezvous with me, I expected an interdiction or something, but it never came. I almost... collided with it, I... I looked at its surface, and I saw my own reflection for a split-second.""And something was in the cockpit with me."... a few moments of strange, tense silence ensued. Until the Rookie laughed.
"Jesus christ, you old-ass traders believe anything. You should've seen the look on your face! I had to keep myself from laughing, that story was so stupid!"The rookie gave his new-found friend a pat on the back and they shared a drunken chuckle.
"Heh...heheheh.. Yeah, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. ... You... really gotta wonder though.", and he asked a question, that any sane trader would.
"Is there stuff out there?""Eh, who cares? We have our own problems."Content with that answer in his drunken state, the Trader soon forgot about it, and continued his rounds. The Rookie went on to do occasional escort jobs for his new friend in the less civil systems, and they shared a few stories from time to time, some real, some fake.
As any sane pair of pilots would.
Kind of based on a true story.
